Engineered for earthquakes? Bay Bridge critic says no

Workers walk up the suspension cable on the tower structure of the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge.(Photo: Michael Short / SF Chronicle)

Concerns over the safety of the new eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge have filled the pages of The Chronicle for weeks. In the wake of reports and questions about Caltrans’ operations and abilities, the state Senate passed laws last month that take direct aim at the agency. The first would move audits and investigations from Caltrans and shift them to the state Transportation Commission, as well as requiring reporting to the governor, the Legislature and the public on what the audits and investigations find. The second requires a more open and unbiased “peer” review of state construction projects.

Tuesday’s Open Forum writer Bill Wattenburg goes a step farther than broader “peer” review. He calls for the state to bring in structural engineering expertise from the national laboratories at Livermore and Los Alamos to run computer analyses on the components of the Bay Bridge’s eastern span that may fail in an earthquake because they are fastened with galvanized long rods or bolts. The bolts were galvanized to make them stronger but it appears to have made them brittle, and thus more liable to fail. Wattenburg notes that there are more than 400 bolts at the base of the 500-foot tower of the self-anchored suspension bridge. If the tower collapses in an earthquake, so does the bridge.

Wattenburg, a Ph.D. electrical engineer and talk-radio host for 40 years, is a frequent Caltrans critic as is the structural engineer whose work he cites. Are they right? Is the bridge fatally flawed? Wattenburg has built a reputation over the years as a problem-solver and prescient (if annoying) critic of engineering projects. You can read his commentary here and judge for yourself.

As always, we invite your Letters to the Editor, which you can submit via our online form here.